Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to guests at a campaign rally at Burlington Memorial Auditorium on October 21, 2015 in Burlington, Iowa.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Donald Trump is not going to let facts get in the way of his narrative. Even though the Republican frontrunner has been unable to come up with evidence to prove there were Muslims in New Jersey cheering on September 11, 2001, he isn’t backing down. "I saw it. So many people saw it,” Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “So, why would I take it back? I'm not going to take it back.”

When NBC’s Chuck Todd challenged him about where exactly he saw this, Trump said he remembers the clips. "I saw it on television. I saw clips. And so did many other people. And many people saw it in person,” the frontrunner in the Republican presidential contest said. “I've had hundreds of phone calls to the Trump Organization saying, 'We saw it. It was dancing in the streets.’” Besides, it’s just logical to think that if there were protests “all around the world” there were also protests in New Jersey, which has a “huge” Muslim population. "Why wouldn't it have taken place? I've had hundreds of people call in and tweet in on Twitter, saying they saw it and I was 100% right."

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"I have a very good memory, I'll tell you," Trump said. "I saw it somewhere on television many years ago. And I never forgot it." The real estate mogul did recognize it was proving to be particularly challenging to find copies of those supposed TV clips. “For some reason, they're not that easy to come by,” Trump said.

Daniel Politi has been contributing to Slate since 2004 and wrote the Today’s Papers column from 2006 to 2009. Follow him on Twitter.